CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Northern and Southern Dynasties
Chinese art of 386–589, when rival northern and southern courts built Buddhist cave temples and refined calligraphy and painting theory.
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No open-access works for Northern and Southern Dynasties are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
From the founding of the Northern Wei in 386 until the Sui reunited China in 589, the country was split. Northern courts were mostly founded by non-Han peoples such as the Tuoba Xianbei, while a series of short-lived southern dynasties ruled from Jiankang, today's Nanjing. Buddhism won imperial support in the north, where rulers carved cave temples at Yungang from about 460 and at Longmen after moving the capital to Luoyang in 494.
Early Northern Wei Buddhas are slim and elongated, with gentle smiles and robes falling in stiff, pleated cascades; by the Northern Qi in the mid-6th century, figures grow rounder and their drapery clings. A hoard of painted and gilded sculpture found at Qingzhou in 1996 shows the later style. In the south, aristocrats refined calligraphy and poetry, the critic Xie He set out six principles of painting, and moulded brick murals in Nanjing tombs portrayed the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.